The Onion

Germany dismantled their electric infrastructure by shutting down their nuclear plants.

It was a well-planned phase-out that de facto started in the 90s, when no new plans were getting built, and got formalised (and properly planned) early 2000s. It was flanked by expansion of renewables, in fact Germany doing that is what gave renewables the initial investment necessary to make them competitive.

Then a conservative government came along and fucked up the transition, decided to exit from the nuclear exit and then to exit from the exit from the exit after Fukushima, but that's another story. They also destroyed the German solar industry, the Chinese then bought the tech for cheap and are now owning the world market.

Only because boomers were afraid of hot metal in a pool.

Anti-nuclear is not a generational stance in Germany.

They replaced the green energy with coal and gas.

Nope. We still have coal plants to be able to export to France so they can claim they are CO2-neutral. Gas is an interim technology, they're going to run on synthesised gas in the future, the pipeline network can store up to three months of total energy consumption (not just electricity) it's ideal long-term and backup storage.

Transporting electricity from Norway to Germany and GB is not efficient as there is a loss of power on the grid to heat during transport.

HVDC is very efficient also your hydrostorage makes excellent batteries. Generally speaking why are you so worried about efficiency, would you rather have wind mills shutting down when they overproduce?